International Security

Walter Pincus at WaPo reports on the new “cyber-range” in the 2010 Defense budget. The “National Cyber Range” (yet to be created) would test the strength and vulnerabilities of government cyber systems against outside experts. DARPA is the owner of this test program now but is supposed to turn it over to another (to be determined) government agency within two years. Given that the DOD is admittedly very short on cyber expertise, hopefully these exercises will highlight not only hardware, software, and partner/contractor network problems but also human resource weaknesses.

Pincus add that currently, DOD is thick with network test beds, “creating an environment of excessive duplication and waste.” No surprise there.

Would love to be a fly on the wall for the “offensive attack” efforts in the cyber test range.

Here’s a link to the DOD Cyber Crime Center and info on its annual conference:

The…Conference annually draws over 800 participants from federal agencies, the law enforcement community, and those from the defense investigative organizations whose primary missions are combating computer criminal and terrorist activities. Leaders from government and industry address cyber-crime topics such as intrusion investigations, cyber-crime law, digital forensics, and information assurance as well as the research, development, testing and evaluation of digital forensic tools. The goal of the conference is to address current trends in cyber crime and those of the future.